Oblomov

A passive but good-hearted member of the Russian nobility, raised by a pampering, infinitely-loving mother, and a highly active member of what will become the bourgeoisie, raised by a stern but practical German father, share a difficult but beautiful friendship and a mutual adoration for a refined young girl. Mikhalkov works hard to convey a dreamlike world that has already almost slipped away without knowing it, but cannot overcome the problems of having to overly condense the events of the novel. The character of Olga, in particular, is reduced to a shadow of Goncharov’s creation, and Elena Solovey is fatally unsuited to the role. What’s also very noticeable is the way that all of the education, which is so important to the formation and depiction of the characters in the book, has been stripped away to almost nothing: this tends to make a lot of the psychology and motivation almost incomprehensible, and the whole thing comes across as being far more superficial than it really should.